caffeinated preemies

"..being a mum of two miracles means knowing that every day is a blessing and a gift. It means that you are just the luckiest person in the world to be a parent. It means cherishing every moment, every breath with such intensity that you feel tears come in your eyes for no apparent reason."

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Month: November 2015

Since I started to shop for my little girl, it is a fact that I do LOVE liberty print!!! A feminine print of small garden-party florals. First popularized by London’s Liberty & Co.department store. It gives off a sweet & sophisticated country vibe with a touch of understated romance. The print is so popular, it made its way into the best kids’ fashion houses like Bonpoint (1.), Jacadi (2.), Cyrillus (3.), just to name few… and as the latest picture of Princess Charlotte (4.) proves – into the royal houses.★

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Caffeinated by the look of little princess Charlotte, I would like to inspire you with some liberty print outfits for fashionable girls below.★

As mentioned in my previous post, I am trying to design a beautiful home for Charlotte, so I realized that it is hard to know where to start. The amount of products available for kids’ bedrooms can be overwhelming and this often creates a challenge in designing a space that befits both me and my child’s personality.

An Australian Interior Designer for kids rooms, Belinda N. helps parents to bridge the gap between baby store bedrooms and stunning, individual creations.

Here are Belinda’s five golden eggs fresh from her design nest on how to create a unique and personalised room for your little one.

1. Make it personal
Create a special space that allows you and your child’s personality to shine through. Don’t fill your space with the latest and trendiest items “just because” – fill the space with treasures full of meaning. That doesn’t mean if your child loves tractors, you should hang a giant tractor print up. Think outside the box. Search for a cool blueprint poster of a tractor or a tractor cushion. Touches like this will add true individuality to a space.

2. Plan
Rather than buying items just to wonder where to put them, plan and create a well thought out space. Gather your ideas on Pinterest and make sure you think about how you will use the products and where they will go. Planning is essential in good design.

3. Think small
Small business, that is. Trawl Instagram for five minutes and you will find loads of amazing small businesses creating magical products. These products are unique and add interesting elements to a room. If you find it isn’t exactly what you are after, see if you can get something custom made. Never be afraid to ask!

4. Pare it back
Tempting as it is to have all the pretty things out and on display at once, this quickly overwhelms a space. Less, really is more. If you have lots of products you love – rotate and change out shelves and prints on a regular basis. Not only will this help to pare back a room, it will make sure you always have variety.

5. Texture
Texture is one of the most under-used elements in kids bedrooms and nurseries. Think about ways to incorporate blankets, rugs, handles and storage. Try different materials such as felt, leather, timber and sheepskins. You will find it gives the room another layer.

Winter has started …. it is a snowy Sunday and I need something what makes my sweet tooth happy. I have big bag of overripe bananas in my freezer, so I thought, banana bread! Of course, as I promised it should be healthy especially before the Christmas indulgence kicks in. In place of the oil I use sugar free applesauce, and in place of the brown sugar I use honey. Oh, and I also use whole wheat flour. It always turns out really good – I do not miss the oil or brown sugar at all – and the bread stays really moist”

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If you make two loaves you can give one away and call it your random act of kindness for the day!

Ingredients

2 cups whole wheat flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup sugar free applesauce

3/4 cup honey

2 eggs, beaten

3 mashed overripe bananas

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Directions

Preheat oven to 175 degrees. Lightly grease a loaf pan.

In a large bowl, combine flour, baking soda and salt. In a separate bowl, mix together applesauce and honey. Stir in eggs and mashed bananas until well blended. Stir banana mixture into flour mixture; stir just to moisten. Pour batter into prepared loaf pan.

Bake in preheated oven for 60 to 65 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into center of the loaf comes out clean. Let bread cool in pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack.★

Currently I am planning and preparing the making of Charlotte’s room, the combination of pastel colors, pinks, yellow and mint green have “caffeinated” me. If the room comes together as I hope it will, I am hoping these will form the basis of the decorating colour palette. I have also had a good look around for inspiration and just love the pops of colour against neutral backdrops.

This is the longest post on the blog and I think also the most important! It all started with the question if I am capable of raising three independent, thoughtful, strong women?

I started to gather my thoughts and those of my mother, grandmothers, and women around the world in an effort to arm them with an updated take on age-old wisdom.

Of all the advice, so much comes back to THREE CORE PRINCIPLES:

1. BE THOUGHTFUL

2. BE KIND

3. THINK FOR YOURSELF

Here are some of my favorites:

1. Be Generous. With your time, your money, your heart. If, on my best day, there was a single lesson I could hope to impart to you, this would be it.

3. Root for other people. We all tend to envy other people’s successes. It’s not intentional; somewhere in our DNA it seems to be programmed that for every success for someone else, there is one less success for us. For every book published, there is one less book we will publish; for every baby had, there is one less baby for us to have. Of course, that is illogical. Fight off those thoughts; there is an unlimited amount of potential for everyone in this universe. Championing others is kind, and even more, it’s a display of optimism that will seep into you and color your view of this life.

3. You don’t have to pretend you know something if you don’t. It’s okay to just say, “I don’t know.” You can’t know everything!

4. You are the wellspring of your own hope.No one (besides your mother) will be more invested in your emotional well-being than they are in their own. Joy is not something gifted to you by other people; it’s an outlook on the world that you have to cultivate independent of friends and lovers. Daughter, if I could give it to you, I would, a million times over, but the truth is that you are singularly responsible for your own happiness.

5. Live alone for a period of time. I love living with you and your father; I also cherish the years I spent living alone. You shouldn’t go from being someone’s daughter to someone’s wife to someone’s mother without first being someone yourself. Living alone will allow you to discover who you are when no one is watching, what you need to get through a day, and ultimately that you are a capable, independent woman.

6. If you marry your first love you will miss out on the exquisite pain of a broken heart. Don’t settle. Risk being alone in order to find what you are truly looking for.

7. Talk to strangers. Teaching you to fear strangers would be cynical. The generosity of unknown people will ease your burden on many occasions. Instead, I want you to learn to gauge people’s intentions by listening to your gut instincts and recognizing subtle cues. Confidence in this skill will allow you to avoid the aberrant persons you encounter and embrace something much more common – the kindness of strangers.

8. Be where you are. Try not to think about where you need to go next or wherever you just came from. This is more difficult than it sounds, but work at it. It’s important for your head to be present in the place where your body is.

9. Unless you’re playing a game, there’s no point in keeping score. Running a tally of who gets what in life will only frustrate you and annoy everyone else. It serves no purpose; the way life’s benefits and hindrances are doled out will never make any sense.

10. Ensure that the “bad” things you do are the result of your own choices.
You are doubtlessly going to engage in some unhealthy, unwise or otherwise questionable behavior somewhere along the line; this is part of learning your limits and establishing your comfort zone. Please have enough self-awareness to at least make the choice to participate, rather than floating through life getting swept up in whatever trouble comes your way.

11. If you test people, they may fail. Friendship, love, and family don’t hinge on any single success or failure; you would do yourself a disservice to administer litmus tests to things as labyrinthine as love and affection.

12. Acknowledge inequity. Don’t let anyone tell you that everyone gets a fair shot. Be sympathetic to the disadvantaged and work hard to include them.

13.Create a sense of family wherever you are. Find people to love and love them unconditionally.

14. Try not to wait eagerly for people to finish their stories just so you can tell your own versions that more directly involve you. You’ll get your chance to speak — but first, listen.

15. Pursue more than just the things you are good at. You will be told at a young age what your talents are. Enjoy the compliments, but don’t accept them at face value. You don’t want to walk a narrow path; attempt things you aren’t comfortable with and uncover skills or proclivities you didn’t know you possessed.

16. Everyone is a hypocrite. Hypocrisy is not the blanket failure it’s made out to be; we all act in ways that conflict with the image we want to reflect or the values we want to embody. Try not to pigeonhole people with expectations; be forgiving of this inconsistency, both in yourself and in others.

17. You will get good at anything you practice.vEverything gets easier the more you do it, good or bad, so choose your habits wisely.

18. If you don’t have the money to buy an extravagant gift for someone special, bake! A homemade meal or dessert is worth more than you’d think.

9. Discipline in your mind; extravagance in your heart. Be practical, but never forget to take the time to dream.

20. It is possible to be both pretty and smart. They don’t always go together, certainly, but one thing does not preclude the other. This goes for you and also for people you meet.

21. There’s a science to everything. Dating, careers, friendships — just because it’s not clear from the onset doesn’t mean you can’t figure it out.

22. Every time you rescue someone else, you rescue yourself a little bit. You will have occasion to save people: to throw a life preserver, to present an opportunity, to alter a destiny for the better. Seize these chances. Reflect your best, most giving characteristics. Rescue yourself from tedious inward focus: These are your opportunities, too.

23. The measure of your goodness is not the amount of love you receive. It is the quality of the love you give to others. It takes a long time to learn this lesson, maybe more time than most of us have.★

Some people might say that Ikea is simple and boring… I disagree, it is an excellent base to create beautiful things. On the blog I will introduce brilliant Ikea hacks every stylish mum should know. Today we ★ pimp my kitchen ★….get caffeinated and tune the Ikea “DUKTIG” play kitchen! Create an individual kitchen for your little one that ads fun & style to the kids room.

I am caffeinated by stripes ★ so basic everybody wears them with everything. Don’t write off this easy print as boring just yet, whether horizontal, vertical, thin, thick, black and white or in living colour, stripes make a graphic statement. And while we cant think of a time when stripes weren’t in, they are certainly a style essential for your little ones.

See below exactly how you can earn your kids style stripes testing this hot trend.★

Another great artist to introduce within my serie ★ hyperrealism★ is Hilo Chen. He is is a Taiwanese-born American painter. Hilo is best known for his photorealistic paintings of the female figure. He is represented by Bernaducci Meisel Gallery in New York where he currently lives and works. His work is in major museum collections throughout the world including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Taipei Fine Arts Museum.

I think if I ever move to another career it would have to be something to do with decorating babies and kids rooms. I love putting together inspiration and ideas for how to create a beautiful nursery space or a kiddy space. I am caffeinated by the Scandinavian style and right now I’m really partial to black & white rooms especially with a subtle hint of another colour. For this mood board I’ve added a dash of pink to brighten up the black and white. And you can find some of my favourites that I have introduced in my previous posts like “Mr. Maria Miffy”. Here’s where you’ll find the picks:★